Cheka, there can never be enough sunken, antediluvian, slime-covered, festering, swamp-swallowed, bizarre, non-euclidean, lizard-man cities, which have stayed hidden, half-submerged, in miserable bogs, crawling with iniquity, since the time Man first climbed down from the trees. Oh what terrible, Lacertilian secrets such a place may hold!

An ancient empire fallen. Oh hey, that would also fit the current Quest

Ah, how I have come to love that sense of accomplishment and victory that I get when I pull the wool over the eyes of a clever player character. What DM Triumphs have you had?

Some of mine:1. Finally killing an incredibly powerful, lucky, annoying player's character.2. Finally achieving a TPK (Total Party Kill)3. Finally achieving a TPK using only traps4. Finally working out how to make it so that d**n wizard doesn't steal the spotlight all the d**n time.

Once Sharlek was the capital of a mighty Lizard Empire; now it is the last of their cities to still be fully occupied and lived in. The Lizard People are now a dying race, perhaps with a few centuries to live. It had all been so different in what for the Lizard people were the Good Old Days of their Golden Age . Born along the banks of the desert rivers, familes joined into warbands, warbands fused into tribesand tribes allied together to form a nation and take the savanna from the humans by force, pushing them back into the colder regions where the Lizards cold not follow. Under a series of reasonably good Emperors,aided at a lower level by a democracy of sorts, the Lizard Empire pushed even into the edges of the temperate regions, and then it all changed when the global tempreture dropped by two degrees. Whole areas of the planet became cold; Lizard warriors caught in these conditions became sluggish, unable to fight well even when their lives were at stake.Those who didn't get out in time were slaughtered by the humans, eager to take back what was once their's. What was worse for the Lizards, was that even in their heartlands, the changed tempretures affected their eggs and caused nine males to be born for every female, dooming the population toshrink every year as battle damage and disease took their toll.

Perhaps they have to migrate like the emperor penguins to a certain place in order to give birth to males. Dangers of many of them congregating and the future of their race all in one place makes it a well kept secret...as well as they can anyway.